FINANCIAL TIMES: Car use often marginalises public transport systems

Description

I was glad to see Anne-Sylvaine Chassany returning to the neglected theme of the mundane economy with her France Notebook “ New speed restrictions on French roads enrage drivers” (August 7), about how the imposition of an 80 kmph speed limit has damaged President Emmanuel Macron’s political popularity.

It is very easy to underestimate the extent to which all west European societies are now formatted around car use in ways that often marginalise public transport systems.

We are carrying out a small-scale study in Swansea, a Welsh town with a population of about 250,000, like the other middle-sized towns where around one quarter of the UK population lives. Of the first 150 respondents, 126 owned or usually had access to a car; 63 of those respondents never used a bus while just 11 never used a car (four are aged over 70 and six live in the inner bus-served district).